There’s very little I can say about Jay at this point without risk of repeating myself (this is my third time seeing him live, and my second in the space of eight months), though that frequency is – I think – high praise in and of itself.

Being that I have no shortage of pictures from his previous gigs, I decided for the most part to give the camera a night off and just enjoy the music. This was probably for the best since a guy in the front row had a manic episode midway through the evening and told the people who were taking pictures to shut the fuck up. Oh, Glasgow. (In his defence, the main culprit should probably learn how to turn off the beeping sound her camera makes every time the shutter closes. Whether that justifies the coronary he gave her by being mere inches from her face when she turned round is a little more debatable.)

That hiccup aside (and, honestly, it was actually pretty hysterical from where I was sitting), Jay’s performance was every bit as good as I’ve come to expect, and the banter between songs as endearing as ever. (“On the subject of the North Pole,” he said, picking up on an earlier comment regarding the Scottish climate, “I have a Christmas song for you. Don’t worry, it’s not happy.”) Jay’s knack for covers can’t be overstated either, and rarely were his vocals more beautiful than on an a cappella rendition of Your House (a hidden track on Alanis Morissette’s Jagged Little Pill) or his stunning cover of Björk’s Hyperballad.

(He also took requests at one stage, and very graciously played A Love Story after I instantly shouted it out.)

As always, Jay stuck around at the end of the night to chat, sign and take pictures, though we rather unexpectedly ran into him again when he showed up at the subway station twenty minutes later. After we confirmed that eating on the underground isn’t verboten, he was kind enough to share the bag of kettle chips he’d just bought, which John politely declined, and I did not on account of my inability to turn down any food that’s offered to me.

He also sat with us the whole way back, and we talked about what he planned to during his proposed sabbatical from music (“Nothing ideally”), how he’s been single for as long as John and I have been together (the better part of a decade, and a seeming impossibility despite his protestations that he’s “a total mess”) and his post-Glasgow travel plans (which included a near-immediate trip back to NYC the next morning before returning to Europe for his final tour dates in Hanover). Due in no small part to our distractions, he almost missed his stop when it arrived, but John pointed it out to him before it was too late. I was somewhat less helpful and (mostly jokingly) explained that I was trying to lure him back to the house.